Q & A: Hilary Becker, Lynbrook Village Trustee

Lynbrook Village Trustee Hilary Becker recently sat down with Patch to talk about the and the village's recent recycling efforts.

Patch: You mentioned at the latest meeting several ways residents can help save the village money by recycling, how can they do this?

Becker: The more money you can take out of the waste stream, and put into a recycling stream, you reduce the tonnage, and then you reduce the cost to get rid of that waste. There are multiple facets involved in getting rid of waste - not just the money you pay the incinerator. There’s the gas costs to get the waste to the incinerator. The wear and tear on the trucks, the labor involved. Likewise, when it’s recycling you still have those costs, but someone at the end of the day is going to pay you for that recycling.

So, the shift is, let’s say it’s $70 per ton, well if you reduce that by 10 or 20 percent, that’s $7 - you’re saving $7 per ton right off the bat. If you get to 20 percent you’re talking about $14 you’re saving. Lynbrook has never really had a good track record when it comes to recycling. I don’t think that’s anyone's fault, it was just never a focus.

Patch: How is the village trying to get residents to focus on recycling?

Becker: The first step is increasing the awareness. We’ve been doing that at board meetings, eventually we’ll start doing newsletter, email blasts, and post it on our website. The more we can advertise and market the awareness part of recycling, I think we’ll start to see a big impact.

The second step is convenience. If you make things convenient for people...the more we can expect them to recycle. So that was the issue about the truck. We just purchased a truck, which new would cost $200,000 – we bought it used for $35,000. It will make things more convenient, so that now when the DPW goes around to collect bottles, plastics and cans, they will also pick up at the same time, the cardboard and the paper. We sent out a card recently to residents that said we‘re now recycling cardboard.

The next thing is to get people to understand it’s not just newspaper they should recycle, but all paper goods. And it’s not just cardboard boxes, but anything and everything that’s cardboard. So far we’ve only spent $35,000 which will probably pay for itself within a year or less. It’s a double effect – saving and earnings. So, that’s only going to have a very huge impact on the budgeting process, which will help us keep our expenses to a minimum, hold the line on taxes and continue our fight against tax increases.

Patch: Can you talk about the tentative budget – What exactly is being done now to reduce taxes before the budget is adopted?

Becker: We’ve really worked diligently and really hard on finding different things that will help save the village money. It’s a laundry list – I couldn’t even go through everything. Every department has come back with a budget that has had either a minimal increase or no increase. Everyone is making the effort to hold the line on expenses. So that we can continue to fight taxes. 

There are some areas where the government is mandating increases. If the DPW comes back to us and says “our labor costs are going up next year because the state is requiring us to increase our pension costs, to increase by 10 or 20 percent,” there’s nothing we can do about that, we have to make those payments.

Patch: What are other reasons for the budget increase?

Becker: Health care, pension costs - those are all fixed numbers. Workers compensation costs have gone up dramatically.

Patch: Are there any plans to layoff any police officers or village employees?

Becker: There are no plans to layoff any police officers or other workers. We’ve been constantly working with them, the DPW and village staff to make things more efficient and effective – and to provide the same services, with less.

Everybody is working as best they can, everybody has a strong understanding of the tough times we’re in, and understand we need to work together as a team.

Patch: Is there anything else residents should know about the budget?

Becker: Just that we’re doing everything we can to fight off tax increases. Even if we were to lay off people and cut services, that tax increase would probably still be there. We’re determined to do this without reducing services and certainly without effecting our police coverage, DPW services, park services, and other services – we’re not looking to cut any of those.